Basking in the sun and their new found freedom, thousands of cyclists, pedestrians and skaters took over a 6-mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles on Sunday for the ninth CicLAvia.

This was the second time the non-profit CicLAvia staged the car-free street event on iconic Wilshire Boulevard, which connects One Wilshire in downtown Los Angeles to Fairfax Avenue along Miracle Mile. The idea of such an open street event for cyclists originated four decades ago in Bogota, Colombia, where certain streets are closed to automobiles every Sunday and holiday and has spread to nearly 100 other Latin American cities.

“Streets are not just for automobiles to whiz by at 40, or, 50, or 60 miles an hour,” Aaron Paley, executive director of the Los Angeles-based CicLAvia said Sunday morning. “Streets are for people. Streets are for everyone. They belong to all of us.”

Paley, a Los Feliz resident, was one of about a dozen co-founders who dreamed about staging such an event in Los Angeles that would take cars off the streets and open them up to people for a short period of time, he said. The first CicLAvia event took place on Oct. 10, 2010, and has quickly gained in both popularity and financial support.

“We have now become the most successful, most transformative, most exciting open streets event in the United States,” Paley said. “I think that’s an incredible tribute to Los Angeles.”

This year’s CicLAvia, which are always located near public transit lines, coincided with the last day of the 2014 Open Streets National Summit in Los Angeles, which drew more than 80 people from dozens of U.S. cities and five other countries to share their expertise and knowledge in organizing such events.

Among them was Marcella Guerrero Casas, founder and director of Open Streets Cape Town in South Africa. She is originally from Colombia and grew up participating in Bogota’s famous “Ciclovía” but said her organization’s events in Capetown — they’ve had three so far — have also been inspired by CicLAvia events in Los Angeles.

“Every city has a different way of embodying open streets,” Guerrero Casas said. “In Cape Town we believe that streets can be more than they are, that if we embrace the concept of open streets that we can really bridge the divide — the spatial but also the social divide — that we have not only in Cape Town but also in the rest of the country in South Africa.”

Streets can be a platform for cultural expression, for economic development, for social interaction and recreation. They also offer an opportunity to experience or move around the city differently, she said.

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Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority — which recognizes how such events can introduce people to using public transit — now plays “a key role” funding open street events and will be providing $2 million per year to cities through the Open Streets Program, said Lindy Lee, the agency’s deputy CEO. The board should vote on the first of these grants in June, she said. Metro is also the lead agency creating a region-wide bike sharing program in which of Los Angeles, Pasadena and Santa Monica will be the first to pilot that project, Lee said.

Encino resident Rebecca Welch, who had participated in several other CicLAvias, was among the cyclists taking advantage of Sunday’s event.

“I love that I can bike the streets and not get run over (by cars) — that’s the best part of it,” Welch, 25, said. “In the Valley, it’s a little bit easier but it’s nice to visit L.A., parts that you normally drive because you can’t see anything when you drive. When you bike, you can see everything.”

Los Angeles Councilman Bob Blumenfield, his wife, Kafi, and their two children were also excited to participate in CicLAvia this year. It was just a week ago Sunday that 8-year-old Nia and 5-year-old Obi had learned to ride their bikes without any support.

In fact, Sunday’s CicLAvia “was one of the motivators last weekend to get them off training wheels,” Blumenfield, who lives in Woodland Hills, said.

Future CicLAvia events are planned for Oct. 5 from Echo Park to East Los Angeles and on Dec. 7 in South Los Angeles. A San Fernando Valley event is also tentatively set for March, 2015. The nonprofit is currently looking at a route that would connect Chandler and Lankershim boulevards, traverse the North Hollywood Arts District, pick up on Ventura Boulevard and go as far west as Coldwater Canyon, Paley said.

“I think it’s a great start for trying out the Valley,” said Paley, who grew up in a portion of Van Nuys now considered Sherman Oaks. “I’m planning a route that goes right by my sister’s house, my brother’s house and my mother’s house so I’m very, very happy and all of my Valley community is thrilled about this.”

Each CicLAvia event costs the city about $200,000 and costs the nonprofit another $250,000, Paley said. The nonprofit relies on support from foundations, corporations, governments and individual giving.